Hospitals to get £800m earmarked for GPs and mental health

Millions of pounds in funding earmarked for mental health, community health, and primary care services is to be diverted to plug acute care hospitals’ deficits this year, it has emerged.

In a letter to clinical commissioning groups obtained by the Health Service Journal,1 NHS England’s chief finance officer, Paul Baumann, confirmed that an £800m (€920m; $980m) contingency fund that was stripped out of clinical commissioning groups’ budgets in 2016-17 will be retained in full by the Department of Health to help reduce the overall deficit that largely stems from hospitals.